• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.61 no.5
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• pp.663-674
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• 2017

The determination of the fundamental period of vibration of a structure is essential to earthquake design. Current codes provide formulas for the approximate estimation of the fundamental period of earthquake-resistant building systems. These formulas are dependent only on the height of the structure or number of storeys without taking into account the presence of infill walls into the structure, despite the fact that infill walls increase the stiffness and mass of the structure leading to significant changes in the fundamental period. Furthermore, such a formulation is overly conservative and unable to account for structures with geometric irregularities. In this study, which comprises the companion paper of previous published research by the authors, the effect of the vertical geometric irregularities on the fundamental periods of masonry infilled structures has been investigated, through a large set of infilled frame structure cases. Based on these results, an attempt to quantify the reduction of the fundamental period due to the vertical geometric irregularities has been made through a proposal of properly reduction factor.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.761-778
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• 2015

The objective of this paper is to report the result of an experimental program conducted on the strengthening of nonductile RC frames by using external mesh reinforcement and plaster application. The main objective was to test an alternative strengthening technique for reinforced concrete buildings, which could be applied with minimum disturbance to the occupants. Generic specimen is two floors and one bay RC frame in 1/2 scales. The basic aim of tested strengthening techniques is to upgrade strength, ductility and stiffness of the member and/or the structural system. Six specimens, two of which were reference specimens and the remaining four of which had deficient steel detailing and poor concrete quality were strengthened and tested in an experimental program under cyclic loading. The parameters of the experimental study are mesh reinforcement ratio and plaster thickness of the infilled wall. The effects of the mesh reinforced plaster application for strengthening on behavior, strength, stiffness, failure mode and ductility of the specimens were investigated. Premature and unexpected failure mode has been observed at first and second specimens failed due to inadequate plaster thickness. Also third strengthened specimen failed due to inadequate lap splice of the external mesh reinforcement. The last modified specimen behaved satisfactorily with higher ultimate load carrying capacity. Externally reinforced infill wall composites improve seismic behavior by increasing lateral strength, lateral stiffness, and energy dissipation capacity of reinforced concrete buildings, and limit both structural and nonstructural damages caused by earthquakes.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.777-790
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate the seismic performance of reinforced concrete (RC) frames strengthened by profiled steel sheet bracing which takes the influence of infill walls into consideration. One-bay, two-story, 1/3 scale two specimens shared same feature of dimensions, one specimen consists only beams and columns; the other one is reinforced by profiled steel sheet bracing with infill walls. Hysteretic curves, envelope curves, stiffness degradation curves and energy dissipation capacities are presented based on test data. Test results indicate that the ultimate load of strengthened specimen has been improved by 225%. The stiffness of reinforced by profiled steel sheet bracing has been increased by 108%. This demonstrates that infill walls and profiled steel sheet bracing enhanced the strength and stiffness distinctly. Energy dissipation has an obvious increase after 12 cycles. This shows that the reinforced specimen is able to bear the lateral load effectively and absorb lots of seismic energy.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.999-1028
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• 2015

Despite the fact that the fundamental period appears to be one of the most critical parameters for the seismic design of structures according to the modal superposition method, the so far available in the literature proposals for its estimation are often conflicting with each other making their use uncertain. Furthermore, the majority of these proposals do not take into account the presence of infills walls into the structure despite the fact that infill walls increase the stiffness and mass of structure leading to significant changes in the fundamental period numerical value. Toward this end, this paper presents a detailed and indepth analytical investigation on the parameters that affect the fundamental period of reinforce concrete structure. The calculated values of the fundamental period are compared against those obtained from the seismic code and equations proposed by various researchers in the literature. From the analysis of the results it has been found that the number of storeys, the span length, the stiffness of the infill wall panels, the location of the soft storeys and the soil type are crucial parameters that influence the fundamental period of RC buildings.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.355-362
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• 2009

Many of residential buildings, which have pilotis in lower stories to meet the architectural needs, are recently constructed in Korea. Usually, infill walls located in the upper stories of these buildings may cause a soft first story, which is very weak from the earthquake resistance. In the design of the buildings, the infill walls of upper stories are usually considered as non-structural elements and thus they are not included in the analytical model. However, the infill walls may affect the seismic behavior of the residential buildings. Therefore, the differences in seismic behaviors of RC buildings with and without masonry infill walls are required to be investigated. In this study, seismic fragility analyses were performed for masonry infilled low-rise RC moment-resisting frames. And seismic behaviors of RC moment-resisting frame with/without masonry infill walls were evaluated. Two types of structural system with the same frame and different allocation of infill walls are used to evaluate the influence of masonry infill walls on seismic behavior of RC moment-resisting frames. The infill walls were modeled as bi-equivalent diagonal struts. The fragility analyses show that the seismic performance of RC moment-resisting frames with soft story is below the desirable building seismic performance level recommended by current seismic codes, indicating high vulnerability of RC moment-resisting frames with soft story.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.100-106
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• 2010

Most of the school buildings were built before the seismic code was established. To consider the sunlight and ventilation to the partition walls are built about 1m height beside columns at typical school buildings. For the reason, columns which is consisted school building occur brittle failure shape by the reduced effective depth. In this study, experimental test for retrofitting effect by Aramid Fiber Reinforced Polymers(AFRP) strips on masonry infilled reinforced concrete(RC) frames is performed. The test results were to ensured enough time to evacuate due to the enhancement of ductility and strength of school buildings to withstand earthquakes using AFRP strips.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.4
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• pp.395-409
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• 2022

The presence of infill generally neglected in design despite the fact that infill contribution significantly increase the lateral stiffness and strength of the reinforced concrete frame structure. Several experimental studies and computational models have been proposed to capture the rational response of infill-frame interaction at global level. However, limited studies are available on explicit finite element modelling to study the local behavior due to high computation and convergence issues in numerical modelling. In the current study, the computational modelling of RC frames is done with various configurations of infill masonry in terms of types of blocks, lateral loading and reinforcement detailing employed with material nonlinearities, interface contact issues and bond-slip phenomenon particularly near the beam-column joints. To this end, extensive computational modelling of five variant characteristics test specimens extracted from the detailed experimental program available in literature and process through nonlinear static analysis in FEM code, ATENA generally used to capture the nonlinear response of reinforced concrete structures. Results are presented in terms of damage patterns and capacity curves by employing the finest possible detail provided in the experimental program. Comparative analysis shows that good correlation amongst the experimental and numerical simulated results both in terms of capacity and crack patterns.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.185-190
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• 2001

The severe shortage of the available sites in the highly developed downtown area in Korea necessitates the construction of high-rise buildings which meet the need of residence and commercial activity simultaneously. The objective of this study is to investigate the seismic performance of this type of building structures. For this purpose, two 1:12 scale 17-story reinforced concrete model structures were constructed according to the similitude law, in which the upper 15 stories have a bearing-wall system while the lower 2-story frames with infilled shear wall have two different layouts of the plan : The one has symmetric plan and the other has unsymmetric plan. Then, this model was subjected to a series of earthquake excitations. The test results show that the layout of shear wall has the negligible effect on the natural period and the base shear coefficient, but great effect on the failure mode of beam-column joint at flexible side frame.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.293-300
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• 2015

In this study, a series of forced vibration testing and ambient vibration measurement were performed at a lowrise masonry-infilled reinforced concrete frame structure before and after seismic retrofit and its dynamic properties were extracted using system identification techniques. Also, analytical models which show similar dynamic properties to the measures ones were constructed. The system identification results showed that damping ratios in x direction along which the dampers were installed has been increased. From the comparison between the analytical models, the effective stiffness of post-installed member and post-reinforced members(shear walls and damper frames) were only 50% of gross sectional stiffness of the members, which indicates that the these members were not fully integrated with the existing structure or members. In addition, support condition of post-installed footing has to be pinned in y direction to match the dynamic properties, which is seemingly caused by the change of fixity of the soil due to the installation of new footing.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.13-22
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• 2010

Masonry infill walls are frequently used as interior partitions and exterior walls in low- or middle- rise RC buildings. In the design and assessment of buildings, the infill walls are usually treated as non-structural elements and they are ignored in analytical models because they are assumed to be beneficial to the structural responses. Therefore, their influences on the structural response are ignored. In the case of buildings constructed in the USA in highly seismic regions, infill walls have a lower strength and stiffness than the boundary frames or they are separated from the boundary frames. Thus, the previously mentioned assumptions may be reasonable. However, these systems are not usually employed in most other countries. Therefore, the differences in the seismic behaviors of RC buildings with/without masonry infill walls, which are ignored in structural design, need to be investigated. In this study, structural analyses were performed for a masonry infilled low-rise RC moment-resisting frame. The infill walls were modeled as equivalent diagonal struts. The seismic behaviors of the RC moment-resisting frame with/without masonry infill walls were evaluated. From the analytical results, masonry infill walls can increase the global strength and stiffness of a structure. Consequently, the interstory drift ratio will decrease but seismic forces applied to the structure will increase more than the design seismic load because the natural period of the structure decreases. Partial damage of the infill walls by the floor causes vertical irregularity of the strength and stiffness.